Pints With Aquinas - Is Anger a Sin??? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

Father Pine talks about what virtuous anger is. Is it Even Possible? What Does it look like? 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work as an assistant director for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines of the Coinas. In this episode I would like to talk about anger. Many of us are familiar with anger, whether personally, existentially, or academically, theoretically, but I think many folks have difficulty healing and growing beyond the bounds set by anger. So many of us feel imprisoned by anger, trapped by anger, otherwise compassed about by anger. So how is it that we're meant to get beyond this point?

How is it that we are meant to use anger as it is intended for our moral flourishing and not to suffer its negative effects? Well, let's think about it together. Here we go. In the Christian tradition, typically anger, like all the emotions, is described as a morally neutral feature of life. Morally neutral feature of life. That's hard to say.

Now, insofar as it is, as it's part of our human nature, it's good, but it's neither pitched towards virtue or towards vice. It kind of just is. So, anger becomes problematic when it's vicious, but it can actually be helpful when it's virtuous. So, what is it that anger kind of addresses in human existence or in human life? Basically, anger registers some kind of injury, and specifically like slight, that is to say, when someone thinks light of you or when someone thinks ill of you or when someone fails to think of you, and it reacts by seeking vindication. Now vindication isn't vengeance, but vindication is the rectification of justice which has been upset by the injury. So, anger can be informed by virtues which help to bring about a just order and healthy relationships.

But to do so is difficult because anger is super-vehement. It is a way of kind of clouding our thoughts and overrunning our humanity, such that we find ourselves lashing out or talking back or whatever else. So what we want is anger incorporated in a kind of virtuous formation, such that it can safeguard the integrity of the person, lest we become victims or doormats, whilst providing impetus to rectify the relationships upon which we depend or which we're already engaged in, but need something in order to perfect them. So, I think that when we experience anger, often enough, it's occasioned by someone not taking care of us,

or when somebody might provoke us to anger, they might incite us to anger. But often enough it's like we recognize that we are not being held in mind and heart by the other person. So like whether your roommate fails to reload the toilet paper in the bathroom, thus leaving you stranded,

or somebody uses you for something other than your friendship, you know, like they invite you to a party but what they really want is for you to DJ rather than for you to be fun and to dance. Or when, yeah, someone speaks ill of you behind your back, whatever it is, you know, when somebody misuses you or when somebody fails to hold you in mind and heart, that often registers for us as anger. Now, I think where anger becomes problematic is when we brood over it, when we permit it to become black in our hearts, right?

Or it can be a problem when we prejudge it, or we preconceive of it as something evil, and then don't even entertain the thought, or we don't even engage with the emotion, because we think that there's no possible way in which it can be incorporated in a virtuous life. But I think we're actually meant to present our anger, we're meant to deploy our anger, but to do so in a way that's responsible. And I think, and I was just this past weekend preaching a retreat with Sister Anna Rae for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, D.C. at the Dominican House of Studies for the DC Young Adult Chapter.

And I was describing how there can be a certain simplicity to anger, like even an innocence to anger. This is inspired by reading Lepanto, a poem by GK Chesterton, where he says, Dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise. And when reading that line, I was like, what? The innocence of anger and surprise? But there can be a kind of surprising quality to anger whereby the person whom you have offended presents you with that offense and says, hey, this was offensive.

But they do so not after much deliberation, not after much thought, like they've been at a distance from you, they've been apart from you, kind of nursing their anger or feeding their anger. But they just say, hey, this hurt me. There's a kind of innocence to that, which I think many of us find helpful as a way by which to encourage a deepening of the relationship. Because it helps us to acknowledge the wound that we've dealt, or it helps us to bring before the other the wound that they have dealt, so as to facilitate the healing that we actually want, which will come by way of pardon, which will come by way of forgiveness, which will come by way of reconciliation. So let come by way of forgiveness, which will come by way of reconciliation.

So let's not be foolish, let's not be naive. The risk of disorder, the risk of bubbling over or lashing out is real, okay? So we need to check ourselves and say, am I just venting my spleen or am I doing this just as an exercise in self-justification, Or is this really about the resolution of conflict? Is this really about the healing of relationships? And I think there are a couple of snares that we want to navigate around. On the one hand, we can be inordinately attached to our own rights, right, to getting ours, and we can make this sound as if it were about justice.

But truth be told, we really prefer our private good to the common good. So we don't want to get too terribly hung up about vindicating every right that we might conceive ourselves as having. We want to think about the network of relationships in which we exist and how we can contribute to them. On the other hand then, a potential snare is an inordinate pleasure in giving vent to resentment or to anger or to anger, to rage, okay?

Because there's a kind of pleasure that comes with expressing your anger. And there can be a kind of pleasure in, you know, trotting your enemies underfoot, even if those enemies used to be your friends. So I think we also need to just to realize that vindication can be used for a kind of sideways delight. And not to indulge either in that inordinate attachment to our own private good, to our own self-conceived justice, or inordinate pleasure and resentment or rage. Okay, so there's a need here for a certain balance.

Like we have to establish a genuine rectification of justice within the setting of a real relationship, alright? And we need to use the emotion in healthy fashion, not bottle it up, right, or not just send it, you know, pell-mell in the direction of our adversary. Because we don't want that anger to resolve into sadness. We don't want that anger to turn black. And what I think you see here is a need for certain complementary virtues. What do I mean by complementary virtues?

Sometimes we find that one facet of human life is actually informed by two virtues. One of which, you know, covers this aspect and the other of which covers that aspect. So a classic example would be magnanimity and humility. So when it comes to hope and despair, we have this virtue of magnanimity, which it moderates our desire for great honors, or great deeds worthy of great honors, precisely because they're great, and it spurs us on. It says, hey, you as a human being are made for a certain grandeur, so get after it. So it helps us to evaluate who we are, what we're for, and then the proportion between

the goods for which we strive in our own capacity. But there's a kind of tendency to excess with magnanimity, so we can slip into vainglory, we can slip into ambition, or we can slip into pride, or we can slip into presumption. Right? And so, magnanimity is safeguarded by another virtue, namely humility, which helps us to recognize that every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the Father of lights. What do you have that you have not received? If therefore you have received it, why do you boast as if it were your own?" So, magnanimity says, you as a human being are made

for great things. And humility, on the other hand, says, all these great things and you, in fact, come from God. So, I think that what we see with anger, like virtuous anger, if we're going to pursue such a course, is this kind of same dynamic of complementary virtues. So on the one hand, there's the virtue of vindication, which is a kind of virtue of justice in the sense that it shares in the dynamism of justice. And what it seeks to bring about is a rectification of the wrong. So it registers the injury and it seeks to bring about the punishment so that what is lacking in justice might be filled up.

And I think it's important that we cultivate this virtue because it addresses an obstacle that might otherwise eventuate an alienation. So like somebody offends you and rather than vindicating that wrong, we just say, I'm going to let this drift. So I'm just going to let this friendship pass slowly out of existence. Not doing anything that would provoke a potential conversation because I don't want to have a conversation, but I'm just going to let it slide. And that's sad, right? Because we're not meant to ghost people, or we're not meant to simply cut out whatever we perceive to be toxic relationships at the slightest provocation. We're meant to hold fast to what is good. And vindication helps us to do just that by saying to the other, you have hurt me, but I think it's worthwhile to actually fix this. Okay? So it expresses a desire for order and a real hope in but I think it's worthwhile to actually fix this."

So it expresses a desire for order and a real hope in the relationship that it's good and that it's worth pursuing. And it pushes against a certain tendency to minimalize or to trivialize the wrongs as if they didn't matter whereby we become victims or doormat. But it has to be governed by a good object and by a good end. So it's got to be like, that the sinner may amend, that he may be restrained and others not be disturbed, that justice may be upheld, that God may be honored. So this is a gentle balance.

This is something that we need to be solicitous for and it's not going to come easy, but I think it's worth pursuing because in presenting that innocence of anger and showing the other that you have been hurt, you're asking the other to help you, right? And seeking the pardon, seeking the forgiveness, seeking the reconciliation, which comes from God alone, but which the other can be an instrument of, so that you can grow, you know, the relationship in which you are engaged and not simply despair of it. All right, so on the one hand we have vindication, but on the other hand we have meekness, okay? So this is what I meant when I said sometimes you have a pair of virtues which work together

in tandem like magnanimity and humility. Here we have vindication and meekness. So meekness is the virtue which moderates the emotion of anger, and we call it clemency when it moderates the expression of anger, the actual acts. So like a punishment. So there are different considerations you know, like considerations that we need to introduce into this vindication, right? And meekness brings these things to bear. So it says, all right, let's adjust for the fact that I am an angry person. Let's

adjust for my choleric temperament. I need to know who I am, my kind of temperamental or constitutional disposition, and I might need to rein things in because I can run hot or my blood can boil. So we need to know that about ourselves and might need to rein things in because I can run hot or I can, my blood can boil. So we need to know that about ourselves and we need to restrain anger at times because it can be just very intense. It can be very ardent. It also adjusts for a certain monomaniacal thinking. So it's not just like my constitution, my temperament. It's also the way that I think, the way that I make judgments introduces a certain excess into anger at times where it's like, if I don't correct this wrong, then everything

will be... It's like, settle down, okay? You don't have to vindicate every wrong every day at every moment, all right? Sometimes you can wait on a thing, talk to a trusted friend, talk to somebody who's been there before, so that way you can work through the steps and present it in a little more of a composed fashion. So there's goodness to the innocence, but you don't want to use that as a way by which to excuse what is in genuine fact excess.

So we need to introduce a kind of epistemic humility, like I don't know everything that went into this and I don't know what's actually motivating me at the present moment, and I don't really know what's at stake, but I should I should be gentle in my judgment the persons Because they could stand to suffer if I judge wrong All right, then we adjust for the other as well Okay We have to adjust for their fragility if we're gonna confront them with our anger the chances are it's gonna be hard for them to Receive that knowledge and so we should take that into account right? We're not looking to crush them

We're looking to heal our relationship and we're looking to help them acknowledge that they did wrong, all right? And to do so in a way that helps them, like, overcome that difficulty or overcome that character limitation. And then fourth and finally, we need to adjust for heaven, okay? Because at the end of the day, the only final horizon of vindication is heaven itself. And when we look to the one who brings about a lasting peace, who brings about a lasting justice, which is, say, righteousness for those whom he has called according to his purpose,

we're looking to our Lord Jesus Christ, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter and opened not his mouth, right? Who vindicated his rights in certain sense, like, you know, if I've spoken wrong, testify to the wrong, but if not, why do you strike me? But, you know, we go before him in kind of a spirit of beggary, asking him for the virtues with which he himself moderated anger, with which he himself perfected anger, right? Because he didn't suffer its excess or defect. He brought it to bear for the rectification of the relationships which he sought to save. So we can't expect that everything's going to be fine and dandy here, this side of the

earth, this side of heaven, sorry, on the earth. We need to look to Christ to help us to discern the time and place and circumstances in which, you know, to live this way. So that's just a little bit of a thought on anger, on its place in our life, how I think it might be of service to relationships, and how I think it might facilitate the healing of those relationships, provided we do so in a virtuous way, which is to say, with vindication and meekness and or clemency, so as to heal and grow the anger itself in service of communion.

Alright, this is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, get sweet email updates when other things happen. If you haven't yet, check out God's Plaining. We recently did a series on the seven deadly sins, so there's one there on wrath, which would be the vicious form of anger, with some helps, some aids proposed as way by which to kind of heal and grow in your own practice thereof. And then if you haven't yet, check out Prudence, Choose Confidently, Live Boldly, a book that

I wrote, which will have companion editions coming soon enough. And I'll be sure to address anger in the book about temperance, but that's going to be like another billion years before I write that. So I'd say stay tuned, except you can't possibly pay attention that long. Alright, no of my prayers for you. Please pray for me, and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pints with a Quince.